Eastern Desert

We left Luxor this morning in Abdul’s minibus, on another foray into the Eastern Desert, this time to the Wadi Hammamat, which runs between the Nile and the Red Sea. We drove north along the Nile Valley on the familiar main road we take towards Abydos, but stopping at the checkpoint just south of Qift. Here the road turns into the desert, an ancient trade and caravan route between Qift (the ancient town of Coptos) and Quseir (the port of Leukos Limen) that ran through the Eastern Mountains.

At the checkpoint the police made us wait for around half an hour while trying to decide if the desert road was still passable after the recent rains. These roads are notorious for being washed away. Eventually, and probably after a little greasing of palms by Abdul, we were allowed to continue. The distance between Qift and Quseir is 180km, but we were only travelling about 85km, as far as the rock inscriptions that are located in a narrow defile just as the road begins to pass between the higher mountains and where the scenery gets more spectacular with every kilometre. Once more we saw evidence of the rain in small lakes at each side of the road and there were parts where the road was covered in mud, or the tarmac had been washed away at the edges, making Abdul concentrate hard on his driving.

As the region became more rugged we could see remains of tall stone-built watchtowers on the tops of the hills, left by the Romans who guarded the trade route. We passed a small Roman fort, then an ancient well known as Bir Hammamat on the left side of the road and stopped a little while later in a very narrow pass between high, dark, jagged mountains. Apart from being a route to the coast, this region was famed for its quarries and gold mines. Throughout pharaonic history expeditions of quarrymen and miners were sent here for months at a time by subsequent kings. Wadi Hammamat contains a variety of sandstone, greywacke and schist-type rocks which were all known as Bekhen-stone in ancient times. The colours of the rocks vary from a very dark basalt-like stone, through reds, pinks and greens and although this stone was usually too flawed for building large monuments it was highly prized for statues, sarcophagi and smaller shrines. I remembered seeing a papyrus map in Turin Museum some years ago which was found in the Deir el-Medina tomb of a scribe named Amennakhte, son of Ipuy, who was commissioned to make the map during an expedition of Rameses IV, the king who sent the largest recorded quarrying expedition to the Wadi Hammamat. The Turin papyrus map is notable for being the only topographic map to survive from ancient Egypt and also for being one of the earliest geological maps in the world with real geographic content.

On the narrowest part of the road, just around a steep bend, Abdul pulled into the side and Sam and I got out of the minibus and picked our way gingerly across the muddy sodden sand towards the cliff. Two hundred metres further on there is a gafir’s hut belonging to the SCA. Sam has been here before so she was able to point out to me exactly where the 200 rock inscriptions in this stretch begin. They are mostly on the south side of the road. Many of the elaborate inscriptions, bruised and engraved into the perpendicular cliffs were left by expedition leaders who announced their allegiance to their king and gave many technical details of the expedition. There are also a large number of cruder carvings, depictions of men, animals and boats left by the workmen or pilgrims travelling through the wadi. Several kings left a record of their expeditions, including Pepy I, Amenemhat, Senwoset I, Seti I and Rameses II. According to the inscription of Rameses IV, his second expedition included 8,362 men, making it the largest since the Dynasty XII reign of Senwosret I, around 800 years earlier. Senwosret records that he sent 17000 men to the Wadi Hammamat to bring back bekhen-stone. It was the Persian conqueror Darius, however, who sent the highest number of expeditions and six separate journeys are recorded.

As I walked along the base of the cliffs I could see inscriptions everywhere. Some of the animal grafitti and boats looked prehistoric – but you can never really date these. I recognised cartouches of kings from the Old, Middle and New Kingdom as well as several of the Persian king Darius I. The god Amun-Min features prominently in many of the inscriptions – Min being ‘Lord of the Desert Tracks’ and in his ithyphallic pose is known as a protector. The Horus falcon is shown in many rock-drawings, as well as the goddess Hathor, ‘Mistress of the Mountain’ and Thoth in the form of a baboon, as he is patron of craftmen. I managed to identify an inscription of Khnemibre, known as the ‘Genealogy of Architects’, which David Rohl and other authors use as a dating tool for the disputed length of the Third Intermediate Period.

Sam and I had just taken out our cameras when a truck pulled up with the gafir and two other men who made their way straight towards us. One of these men, it turned out, was the antiquities inspector for the Red Sea area and he told us in no uncertain terms that this ‘site’ was closed and could not be visited or photographed without special permission from Dr Hawass (and payment of a large fee). We could not believe it. After a lot of pleading and argument the inspector finally let us take a couple of photographs and then insisted that we leave. How is that for bad timing? In the whole of the Red Sea area he had choosen the same day and the exact same time as us to visit Wadi Hammamat. I had waited years to see this place, which is after all on a public road.

As we were escorted away from the base of the cliff I turned around too quickly and my feet slid out from under me on a wet patch of deceptively deep mud and down I went onto my back. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry and I know Sam was having trouble keeping a straight face. And in my attempt to keep my camera out of the mud I managed to hurt my wrist. As I was helped up I realised that the whole of my back from my neck right down my legs were absolutely covered in mud and my sandals had sunk about 15cm into the red oozy stuff. But at least my camera was OK!

I knew I couldn’t get back into the minibus in the filthy state I was in, so I had to stand on the road with my back to the sun and dry off for half an hour – luckily the sun was hot and the mud eventually dried to a sandy powder that could easily be brushed off my clothes. The inspector and gafir had moved on a little way up the wadi, but they were still watching us. But even the view from the road was interesting, with stone workmen’s huts on the roadside and half-way up the cliff I could see the remains of a stone sarcophagus that had been left behind, perhaps because it was damaged. When I had dried off we decided to drive a few kilometres further on to a cafeteria at Bir Fawakhir, the only settlement on this road. From the little coffee shop, populated mostly by truck drivers, another wadi branches off to the north where, we were told, are numerous stone huts of the Roman gold-miners camps.

Sam had not been feeling well this morning and after our rest stop, she was getting worse, so we decided to call it a day and head back to Luxor. The day had been a disaster but at least I had finally seen the wonderful Wadi Hamamat inscriptions.

After a day of pottering about in Luxor it was back to ‘work’, as today I was going to visit a site I hadn’t seen before. Sam had already been to Kanais and she hoped I wouldn’t be too disappointed by the tiny ruined temple of Seti I located on the road from Edfu to Mersa Alam. Places like this are so much easier to visit now that the police convoy is no more, though permission still had to be obtained by Abdul to take us in his minibus. We left Luxor at 6.30am for the long drive south.

In an hour we had reached the ‘Black Horse’, the Shaorawla checkpoint and we continued on the road to Edfu until we reached the bridge over the Nile into the town. Here we turned off into the Eastern Desert and the Wadi Abbad. We drove about 50km on a fairly good tarmac road through quite flat and boring landscape, but on either side of the road there were small lakes, evidence of the rain storm from a week ago. These looked strange in the otherwise parched desert landscape. Eventually the land rose on either side into small hills, some having cairns and Roman lookout posts on their peaks. Openings in the hills showed several side-wadis and just before the most well-known of these, the Wadi Miah, we came to Kanais, also known as el-Ridisiya.

The temple was first mentioned by Cailliaud, an explorer who visited the area in 1816. It is also the site of an old watering station and a small well-preserved Roman fort. Parking first on the road, Abdul tested the wet muddy sand and decided to risk driving over it part of the way to the temple, where we got out and walked the rest of the way. A police truck delivered the gafir about ten minutes later. The gafir went into his hut after saying hello to us, the police left and soon we could see tea being put on to brew on a little stove.

The Temple of Amun-re built by Seti I is a rock-cut speos, carved into the rocky gebel which reminded me of Horemheb’s rock-temple at Gebel-el-Silsila, or Hatshepsut’s temple at Speos Artimedos. Only the sandstone vestibule of Seti’s temple is open, the inner portions of the temple have been bricked up at some point. Four columns with papyrus capitals hold up the roof lintels, which are also decorated and the walls are covered in quite good, though sometimes damaged reliefs depicting the King before Amun-re and especially showing his victories over Kushite and Asiatic warriors. There is an alcove with a statue of the king. The guard left Sam and I alone to take our pictures.

Outside the temple there is a lot of grafitti and ancient inscriptions. At first they are difficult to see and most of them were in the shadow of the high cliff with the sun behind, but once we found one or two they seemed to spring out everywhere before our eyes. Most of them were high up on the cliff and though I scrambled up the scree as high as I dared, my long telephoto came in very useful here. I wondered how the original artists got up there to carve them.

One inscription is by the official responsible for digging the well, another carved by a Viceroy of Kush named Eni. There is Greek script, hieroglyphs and hieratic script and more modern 19th century grafitti from all the travellers who have visited the site over the centuries. Being a source of precious water, Kanais probably represented quite an important stopping place for travellers through the Eastern Desert, and each have left their mark. Apart from obvious hieroglyphic inscriptions there is also what looks like older rock-art depicting boats, giraffes, gazelles, an elephant, ostrich and other animals that have been bruised into the soft sandstone. Far from being disappointed I thought it was a wonderful place.

We walked around the Roman fort and though roofless with low walls, it still contains parts of small rooms and windows and the floor was scattered with pottery sherds. We looked at a round feature we assumed to be the remains of the well, as well as a rectangular pit that looked like it may have been a bathing pool. Eventually we wandered back to the gafir’s hut where he and Abdul were now drinking tea. After a few minutes we gingerly picked our way back to the minibus over the sodden sand, trying to find dry places to walk. The mud had half-dried in places leaving fantastic cracked patterns in large patches on the ground that I couldn’t stop photographing.

Back on the road we carried on east for another 10km where the more beautiful mountainous scenery begins towards the entrance to the Wadi Barramiya. At Bir el-Kanais, a desert track turns off to the right into the Wadi Miah. In this part of the Eastern desert, emerald mines and gold mines have been exploited since Roman times, but here we turned around and headed back towards Edfu. On either side of the road there were a lot of fenced-off military posts, as well as a few unusual Nubian-style domed buildings and several herds of camels. Back in Edfu we crossed the bridge into town and Abdul stopped to buy us some tamiya sandwiches, which we took to a park and ate under the shade of tall trees.

It had been a long morning and I felt like we had already seen a lot today, but the day wasn’t over yet. By the time we left Edfu after our leisurely lunch it was still only 2.00pm and Abdul suggested we stop at el-Kab to visit the New Kingdom tombs, as we would be passing right by the site. Sam and I never pass up the chance to visit tombs. When we arrived at el-Kab there were no other tourists, which didn’t surprise us because although visited much more than it used to be, the site is still off the main tourist itinerary. The guards seemed pleased to see us, so we bought our tickets for 30 EL and headed up the long flight of stone steps to the tomb terrace.

Though we have visited el-Kab several times before, Sam and I spent quite a long time in each of the four open tombs while the two young guards sat outside and chatted as though they hadn’t seen each other for months. And they say women can talk! We began at the Dynasty XVIII tomb of Paheri which has lots of interesting reliefs, including some beautiful agricultural scenes. Next we went into the less well-preserved tomb of Setau, a priest during the reign of Rameses III, where there is a lovely depiction of the barque of the goddess Nekhbet.

The third tomb on the terrace is that of Ahmose, son of Abana, grandfather of Paheri. I have a soft spot for this tomb which contains Ahmose’s long autobiographical text that I had to translate years ago for a hieroglyph course. Of course I have long forgotten the exact wording of the text which describes him as ‘Captain of Sailors’, but I remember seeing the beautiful hieroglyphs carved on the wall of this tomb for the first time and it left a deep impression on me, really bringing the text to life.

Renni is the owner of the fourth tomb, and this is probably my favourite because of the fabulous colourful reliefs and unusual subjects. Renni was a mayor of the town of Nekheb during the reign of Amenhotep I. I particularly love the detail of the funerary scenes in this tomb, which include depictions of Muu-dancers wearing tall basket-weave headdresses. The tiny reliefs are so beautifully drawn and painted. All of these tombs at el-Kab are well worth the effort of a visit.

By the time we arrived back in Luxor the sun had already set. It has been a very long but very productive day with so many new things to think about and discuss, which Sam and I did over a late dinner at Maxim’s.

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